Professor of Marine Science and Director of the Vester Field Station
Phone: (239) 590-7527
E-Mail: drumbold@fgcu.eduOffice: AB7 432

Darren Rumbold joined the faculty of the Coastal Watershed Institute in 2006 as an Associate Professor in the Department of Marine and Ecological Sciences. Prior to this he was a Lead Environmental Scientist coordinating all mercury monitoring and research conducted by the South Florida Water Management District. He is a former recipient of an Environmental Science and Engineering Fellowship from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, during which he worked at U.S. EPA’s National Center for Environmental Assessment in Washington, DC.

His research interests include landscape ecotoxicology and risk assessment. His current research focus is on the sources and fate of methylmercury (MeHg) in estuarine and coastal systems. He recently completed a three-year, collaborative project with NOAA investigating sources of MeHg to Florida Bay. He also recently published a probabilistic risk assessment of the effects of MeHg on several avian species in the freshwater Everglades and, in 2005, co-chaired a symposium titled “Florida Ecosystem: Case Studies and Relevance for Risk Analyses” at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Risk Analysis. Over the past 20 years, he has published studies on a wide range of metals, metalloids and organics including lead, copper, selenium, organochlorine pesticides and dioxin. As part of his Ph.D research at University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science he developed early-life stage bioassays using various reef species and documented brevetoxin, the natural toxin from the red tide dinoflagellate Karenia brevis, concentrating at the sea surface microlayer under non-bloom conditions.